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JULY 28, 2015 -- If your house were burning down, who would you want to respond? The local firefighters, armed with hoses and broad training in first aid, firefighting, and crowd management? Or would your panicked neighbors running back and forth with five-gallon buckets of water suffice? Presumably, everyone would choose the trained firefighters. Why? Well, because they know what they are doing! People who know what they are doing instill confidence and reduce panic—even in the worst situations. By being prepared for an emergency, firefighters and other responders can act quickly and efficiently, reducing injuries to people and damage to property. People who have considered the range of risks for any given emergency—from a house fire to a hurricane—and have formed plans to deal with those risks are more likely to have access to the right equipment, tools, and information. When disaster strikes, they are ready and able to respond immediately, moving more quickly from response to recovery, each crucial parts of the resilience continuum. If they prepared well, then the impacts to the community may not be as severe, creating an opportunity to bounce back even faster. Having the right training and plans for dealing with disasters helps individuals, communities, economies, and natural resources better absorb the shock of an emergency. That translates to shorter recovery times and increased resilience. This shock absorption concept applies to everything from human health to international emergency response to coastal disasters. For example, the Department of Defense recognizes that building a culture of resilience for soldiers depends on early intervention. For them, that means using early education and training [PDF] to ensure that troops are "mission ready." Presumably, the more "mission ready" a soldier is before going off to war, the less recovery will be needed, or the smoother that process will be, when a soldier returns from combat. Similarly, the international humanitarian response community has noted that "resilience itself is not achievable without the capacity to absorb shocks, and it is this capacity that emergency preparedness helps to provide" (Harris, 2013 [PDF]). NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration recognizes the importance of training and education for preparing local responders to respond effectively to coastal disasters, from oil spills caused by hurricanes to severe influxes of marine debris due to flooding.

Within NOAA, our office is uniquely qualified to provide critical science coordination and advice to the U.S. Coast Guard, FEMA, and other response agencies focused on coastal disaster operations. The result helps optimize the effectiveness of a response and cushion the blow to an affected community, its economy, and its natural resources, helping coasts bounce back to health even more quickly. (NOAA)

In fiscal year 2014 alone, we trained 2,388 emergency responders in oil spill response and planning. With more coastal responders becoming more knowledgeable in how oil and chemicals behave in the environment, more parts of the coast will become better protected against a disaster’s worst effects. In addition to trainings, we are involved in designing and carrying out exercises that simulate an emergency response to a coastal disaster, such as an oil spill, hurricane, or tsunami. Furthermore, we are always working to collect environmental data in our online environmental response mapping tool, ERMA, and identify sensitive shorelines, habitats, and species before any disaster hits. This doesn't just help create advance plans for how to respond—including guidance on which areas should receive priority for protection or response—but also helps quickly generate a common picture of the situation and response in the early stages of an environmental disaster response. After the initial response, NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration is well-positioned to conduct rapid assessments of impacts to natural resources. These assessments can direct efforts to clean up and restore, for example, an oiled wetland, reducing the long-term impact and expediting recovery for the plants and animals that live there. Within NOAA, our office is uniquely qualified to provide critical science coordination and advice to the U.S. Coast Guard, FEMA, and other response agencies focused on coastal disaster operations. Our years of experience and scientific expertise enable us to complement their trainings on emergency response operations with time-critical environmental science considerations. The result helps optimize the effectiveness of a response and cushion the blow to an affected community, its economy, and its natural resources. Our popular Science of Oil Spills class, held several times a year around the nation, is just one such example. Additionally, we are working with coastal states to develop response plans for marine debris following disasters, to educate the public on how we evaluate the environmental impacts of and determine restoration needs after oil and chemical spills, and to develop publicly available tools that aggregate and display essential information needed to make critical response decisions during environmental disasters. You can learn more about our efforts to improve resilience through readiness at response.restoration.noaa.gov.

Having the right training and plans for dealing with disasters helps individuals, communities, economies, and natural resources better absorb the shock of an emergency. That translates to shorter recovery times and increased resilience. NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration recognizes the importance of training and education for preparing local responders to respond effectively to coastal disasters. (NOAA)

View of Hurricane Katrina destruction in the City of New Orleans taken from a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter during an aerial pollution survey, September 5, 2005, New Orleans, Louisiana. (NOAA)